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<h1><a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/27512776">No Shadow of Parting</a> by <a class='authorlink' href='https://archiveofourown.org/users/Nyanoka/pseuds/Nyanoka'>Nyanoka</a></h1>

<table class="full">

<tr><td><b>Category:</b></td><td>Fire Emblem Series, Fire Emblem: Fuukasetsugetsu | Fire Emblem: Three Houses</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Genre:</b></td><td>Alternate Universe - Ghosts, Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Alternate Universe - Reincarnation, Background Relationships, Choking, F/M, Ghosts, Haunting, Kissing, Love/Hate, Mildly Dubious Consent, Non-Linear Narrative, Stream of Consciousness, Violence, relationship subtext</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Language:</b></td><td>English</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Status:</b></td><td>Completed</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Published:</b></td><td>2020-11-11</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Updated:</b></td><td>2020-11-11</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Packaged:</b></td><td>2021-05-18 02:29:14</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Rating:</b></td><td>Teen And Up Audiences</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Warnings:</b></td><td>Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Chapters:</b></td><td>1</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Words:</b></td><td>4,108</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Publisher:</b></td><td>archiveofourown.org</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Story URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/works/27512776</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Author URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/users/Nyanoka/pseuds/Nyanoka</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Summary:</b></td><td><div class="userstuff">
              <p>There's something wrong with her new house.</p><p>Edelgard is certain of that.</p>
            </div></td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Relationships:</b></td><td>Dimitri Alexandre Blaiddyd/Edelgard von Hresvelg, Edelgard von Hresvelg &amp; Hubert von Vestra</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Comments:</b></td><td>2</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Kudos:</b></td><td>30</td></tr>

</table>

<a name="section0001"><h2>No Shadow of Parting</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Author's Note:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
      <p>Can't believe that I'm writing something that's actually not problematic...what a strange, pleasant feeling...</p><p>I like Dimigard a lot, but I was really busy for its ship week in October, so I didn't have time to participate...though that's part of why ghosts is the central idea. That, and I love Gothics.</p><p>Little Fic to do a lil' reset on my headspace and writing style as well, so I can go back to terrorizing my current/normal fandom's AO3 tag with more fics...just finished up my last longfic, so I need a breather...unfortunately this is not a ficlet since it ended up a lot longer than I expected.</p>
    </blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>There’s something wrong with her house. She’s certain of that.</p><p>It isn’t in the wallpaper—floral pattern faded and kitschy, more fit for a nursing home than for a house in the higher end part of town—or even in the history, pristine and mundane. Hubert, true to his wary nature, had assured her of that beforehand.</p><p>No murdered tenants, no secret cults, nothing suspicious or controversial outside of perhaps the tacky decorations and the front yard—green grass freshly mowed upon arrival, paint freshly done and set in a baby blue, and picket fence circling the property, white rib cage rising upward toward the blazing sun, and awaiting some family with two and half kids, dog trotting after with pink tongue lolling and mud-adorned paws.</p><p>It’s a perfect house, well-cared-for and well-lived-in, set in a perfect neighborhood, neighbors jovial and friendly yet not overly prying.</p><p>She’s never cared for nosy people after all, no one outside of Hubert anyhow.</p><p>Nonetheless, despite the quaintness of everything, the perfection of everything, she’s certain that there’s something wrong with her house.</p><p>It isn’t in the appearance, it isn’t in the history, and it isn’t even in the location or the neighbors.</p><p>Rather, it—the strangeness, the wrongness—is in the man sitting at the foot of her bed, gaze focused solely on her and hands folded neatly in his lap.</p><p>She feels like she should remember him.</p><hr/><p>Moving to a new city halfway across the country hadn’t been her first choice, but it had been her best.</p><p>Much like with the house, there hadn’t been anything extraordinary about her decision to move.</p><p>A change of pace and a decision related to work—promotion requiring relocation and decision met with little resistance or complaint from everyone except Hubert, concern having been apparent upon his face during her announcement and still apparent even in the video calls she makes to him.</p><p>Perhaps it’s controlling—Hubert has always had issues with that, ones that even he himself wouldn’t deny—but to her, it’s simply another of his quirks, somewhat unpleasant if entirely expected of her childhood friend.</p><p>Even twenty-five years later, she at thirty-two and he at thirty, Hubert worries, a consequence of his nature and of their own shared past: her parental divorce weathered together, him taken in after his parents’ untimely death, and he always by her side even in the most mundane of matters—her run for high school student council, his courting of Bernadetta, and countless nights spent studying together at university, sometimes in the same room and other times over video call and text.</p><p>They have always made time for one another.</p><p>Hell, she had even been his best man at the wedding, decision met with a jesting complaint from Ferdinand. Really, what did Ferdinand expect? For him to take her place? Despite their dwindling animosity over the years, they aren’t that close, close friends like everyone in their group certainly but nowhere near the history she and Hubert have.</p><p>They’ve done everything together, shared every thought, every feeling, and every occasion together—two halves of the same soul and souls weaved from the same material.</p><p>They’ve never been this far apart, an hour’s or two’s drive perhaps, but not thousands of miles apart. Even for grad school, they had only been a city apart.</p><p>Certainly, he would worry less if she weren’t alone—no immediate contacts, family or friends, and work only filled with strangers—but she could take care of herself she thinks.</p><p>She’s old enough now, no longer that vulnerable girl from childhood, eyes often wet and in need of comfort.</p><p>Thus, she doesn’t expect any troubles, nothing outside of the standard assortment—car troubles, workplace vendettas, and even simply an excess of concerned checkups, texts and calls, from her friends, weekly-coming until she settles in, house completely refurnished and furniture and knickknacks set up, infesting like maggots.</p><p>There shouldn’t be any problems, nothing outside of the mundane, the boring, and the marginally obnoxious.</p><p>It’s a decent house in a decent neighborhood, history marked only by the exchange of coin and property titles rather than blood and newspaper clippings, headlines blocky and large and conjured up in ill intent rather than in objectiveness.</p><p>Thus, she thinks nothing of it when everything begins, events small yet odd, slightly unnerving, but nothing she could define as wholly unnatural, supernatural.</p><p>She, unlike Bernadetta, doesn’t believe in ghosts, wicked things more fit for a children’s Halloween special or some grandmother’s folktale than for the present.</p><p>Not until he appears anyhow.</p><hr/><p>If she were to determine when everything began, she, after a moment of pause, would point to the second Sunday after her arrival.</p><p>She hadn’t done anything odd that day—breakfast at seven sharp after her morning routine, lunch at noon, and then an hour of reading. Really, the only difference is that she had deigned to clean the attic that day, loft ladder pulled down with a <em>thunk</em> and scattering dust and cobwebs everywhere.</p><p>It, the attic, had been unlike the rest of the house, dirty and dusty and lacking in that particular care, comfort, of a well-lived-in space. Though, she hadn’t thought much of it. Most people don’t visit their attics after all.</p><p>Flashlight shining in hand, the stairs had creaked underneath her steps, each one carrying her further upward and into the darkness.</p><p>Dust and cobwebs, speckles displaced as she moves through the place, pass the cloth-covered furniture: each sheet pulled off, each piece inspected, and then promptly re-covered.</p><p>It isn’t a particularly special place, rather standard really. She doesn’t find any treasures, no gold or gems or some famous artist’s or writer’s secret collection, and she doesn’t find any oddities—no ghosts and no blood-drawn warnings on the walls.</p><p>Even the furniture isn’t special, each one modestly old, style out fashion, and each likely to fetch a modest price at the pawn shop but sales nowhere enough to earn her a fortune.</p><p>When she reaches the last piece, however, she pauses, fingers outstretched over the white cloth, barely touching.</p><p>She isn’t sure of the reason for why she hesitates. She hadn’t hesitated with everything else after all, and it is only a quick glance, curiosity driving.</p><p>How odd. She almost wants to blame Linhardt for it, he and his little tales, intentionally prickling and meant more to tease than to truly scare and offend.</p><p>After another pause, she shakes her head before finally pulling off the covering, dust flittering in her flashlight’s beam like little insect scales.</p><p>Ratty and faded, value ascribed only to the age and frame rather than the contents and the painter.</p><p>That is how she would describe the painting. Perhaps it had been beautiful at one point—even with the faded nature of it and her own amateur discernment, she could recognize artistry—but that had been then. Underneath her gaze now, the image is only stained, a consequence of poor keeping and of the weather rather than for intention.</p><p>At the very least, she could somewhat recognize the artist’s subject, discern his—it is a man by her best estimates; the shoulders are too broad otherwise—features, as blurred as they are.</p><p>Blond hair styled into a short coiffure, pale-skinned, and face set into a strained smile, lips and face smudged by time and water stains and expression not quite reaching his eyes, dark and mournful.</p><p>They’re blue, she notes, blue and discomforting, akin to the ice covering of a lake. She couldn’t quite look at it directly or for long, goosebumps soon rising upon the skin like miniature boils with each passing second.</p><p>Despite her earlier judgement, it isn’t a particularly pleasant painting to look at in her opinion—factitious in emotion, fitting for an aristocrat—but at the very least, she thinks she could sell it for a decent price.</p><p>Heirlooms and artifacts—history—are good for that no matter the state of their beings.</p><p>Pulling out her phone, fingers quickly tapping in the passcode and then moving to her camera app, she aims her phone at the painting. She isn’t well-versed in art history, knowledge coming only from a few low-level classes and nowhere near to the extent that Bernadetta has.</p><p>Practical as she is, she wants a second opinion on it, another gauge of its value before she carts it off, grime and stains and all in the back of her car.</p><p>Perhaps that had been her mistake. After all, it is one thing to notice something and then forget it, damn it to obscurity and the vestiges of history, and another to acknowledge it, memories prodded and heckled into life.</p><p>When her camera flashes, light illuminating the blue of his eyes and the grimness of his smile, she feels a chill, cold penetrating pass her clothes and into the skin, blood thrumming and bones shivering.</p><p>There are no windows in her attic, no obviously loose planks or holes for a summer draft to enter.</p><p>There is nothing that should make her feel as cold as she does now.</p><p>As unwanted and as hated—loved—as she feels now.</p><hr/><p>Despite her own discomfort, nothing overly strange happens that day or the next or even the week after.</p><p>No strange dreams, no odd phone calls, voices distorted and malevolent, and not even shadows in the edges of her vision, caffeine-fueled or otherwise.</p><p>Her mail arrives on time, exactly at one o’ clock and with no odd addresses or entirely bereft of names, and her car starts normally, checkup having been a mere three days earlier.</p><p>The only oddity she could really discern is the faint niggling she feels, intuition warning. Of what? She doesn’t know, but she merely attributes it to Linhardt once more, ghost stories prickling like stinging nettle.</p><p>Even when she becomes forgetful—items displaced, not quite set where they should be, or always slightly ajar, untidy—she only attributes it to stress, feeling caused by work and her recent move. She hasn’t settled in completely yet after all.</p><p>Lost gloves, displaced keys and pens, and even faucets not entirely screwed shut, trickle dipping and water bill rising for the month alongside a building headache.</p><p>Despite her best attempts to be mindful, nothing quite works, quite stays where they should be.</p><p>She couldn’t quite explain everything: the chill of before, the lost items, or even simply the nature of it all, ambience suffocating and unsettling and further unhelped by the nightly caterwaul of strays, cats and dogs curiously disappearing during the day, missing when animal control arrives.</p><p>She isn’t forgetful, not to this extent, nor is she prone to superstition and paranoia.</p><p>Respectively, those traits belong to Bernadetta and Hubert.</p><p>Thus, she couldn’t quite explain everything.</p><p>Even when everything begins to escalate—items disappeared or moved elsewhere, new locations too nonsensical to be mere absent-mindedness, locked doors open when she returns home from work yet nothing stolen, and noises soon sounding in the night, howling and disruptive, more beast than man yet only heard by her—she couldn’t explain it.</p><p>Nothing outside of the noise being an animal’s work anyhow.</p><p>It must be a beast.</p><p>No human sounds like that.</p><hr/><p>Rather unfortunately, her painting isn’t worth much by Bernadetta’s rough estimates. Certainly it’s <em>old</em>, a piece of history—that much is obvious—but it isn’t <em>grand</em>, something that collectors and museums would salivate over.</p><p>It isn’t a painting by some well-known artist or a portrait of some well-known aristocrat. Though, that’s only by her rough guess and Bernadetta’s. Without a more detailed examination, impossible with their current distance, Bernadetta couldn’t guarantee any certainty of worth.</p><p>Furthermore, she herself hadn’t looked at the painting for long after all nor does she want to return up there for a longer look, a consequence of both her unease and a fear of further damaging it.</p><p>She doesn’t have the skills to examine it, painting already fragile and ratty and worn, nor does she have the excess funds to hire a professional appraiser.</p><p>That’s what she tells herself anyhow.</p><p>She would prefer to have it remained covered and rotting.</p><p>She doesn’t want to look at it.</p><hr/><p>She doesn’t tell Hubert about her troubles—she knows him well enough to understand that he would drop almost everything for her if it were a serious matter, no matter how foolish—but she doesn’t need to. He could see it on her face, dark circles having formed underneath the eyes, skin pallid, and scowl apparent even as she tries to hide everything, makeup worn yet disguising nothing.</p><p>He doesn’t ask outright—he knows her just as she knows him—but the prodding, words coy yet obvious, is proof enough.</p><p>Hubert has always been nosy, too prying for his own good.</p><p>Nonetheless, she doesn’t ignore his calls or his texts. Why would she? They’re friends—best friends—and she has always looked forward to their near-nightly calls, to his voice and to his reasons and his wit, humor dry and sometimes joined by Bernadetta’s.</p><p>Even with her move, that doesn’t change.</p><p>Conversations drifting from the weather to obnoxious coworkers and even simply to their dinner, she having ordered takeout tonight and he with a homecooked meal, crab linguine with basil and lemon at Bernadetta’s choice, they aren’t particularly interesting in the objective sense, but she doesn’t mind.</p><p>It’s Hubert after all. As obnoxious as he could be at times, he is a comfort, a familiarity.</p><p>Outside of extenuating circumstances, their conversations have never quite stilled, briefly lulled perhaps, but never stopped entirely.</p><p>Thus, she doesn’t quite understand the reasoning for his pause, silence coming as she hears a creak behind her, house shifting once more, or for the way his hand slowly drifts to his phone, device having been set facedown next to his laptop.</p><p>She doesn’t understand any of it—the way his gaze drifts over her shoulder, intent, the way Bernadetta’s eyes widen as she glances over from her spot on her and Hubert’s bed, and the way they tense, silence deafening and interrupted by the creaking of her house and the hum of the laptop’s fan, unbearable.</p><p>“Something wrong?” she asks. They’re never normally this quiet.</p><p>Even when she repeats herself a second time, house having set once more, they don’t reply.</p><p>It’s only on the third repetition that Bernadetta speaks, voice oddly soft yet franticness apparent.</p><p>“D-did…you get a housemate? Invite someone over?”</p><p>“No?” She shakes her head. “You know I don’t like people. I live alone.”</p><p>She doesn’t understand why Hubert’s movements quicken then, hand grabbing at his phone and hurriedly unlocking it, dial tone soon audible and ringing akin to funeral bells.</p><p>Not until her laptop’s screen darkens and cracks, monitor almost completely shattered and incident entirely unprompted.</p><p>There had been no force, nothing except the creaking of her house and the silence after, nothing that would prompt such an occurrence.</p><p>Though that isn’t her biggest concern, her biggest surprise.</p><p>That title would belong to the face she sees in the screen, blurred and cracked yet still distinctly recognizable despite everything.</p><p>She would recognize the source of her discomfort.</p><p>The man from the portrait.</p><hr/><p>She couldn’t explain it even as the police arrive minutes later, man having disappeared, flickered out of existence as if merely a figment of her imagination.</p><p>Hell, she would assume he was if it were not for the aftermath, monitor still destroyed even as she pinches herself and quickly goes to wash her face in the adjoining bathroom, cool water doing nothing for her nerves and her apparently overactive imagination.</p><p>No break-ins, no suspicions of stalking, nothing.</p><p>She has nothing to tell the police before they leave, warning soon issued for both her and for Hubert.</p><p>She has nothing to tell Hubert and Bernadetta either.</p><p>Nothing that she would be willing to tell them anyhow.</p><p>Though, she doesn’t think she needs to. The faint recognition in Bernadetta’s eyes before the monitor had cracked had been apparent enough, and she, much like with Hubert, understands Bernadetta’s nature, superstitious and fearful and characteristics remnants from her own history—family and blood and memory intertwined with the present.</p><p>Much like herself, Bernadetta had recognized him from the painting.</p><p>The tidy blond hair, hairdo remarkedly out of date, the broad shoulders, and the blue eyes, mournful, furious, in a way that riles her heart, paradoxically both distaste and yearning, dark and bubbling in a way that she both remembers and doesn’t—body and soul recalling in a way her mind, her memory, doesn’t.</p><p>That feeling—it’s hers and his alone, maddening in a way that tears at her tongue and at her breast, heart thudding, resounding, as if in an attempt to escape.</p><p>It isn’t love—she has never been in love, earnest and innocent and kind—but it isn’t hate either.</p><p>It isn’t even an in-between, apathy or perhaps ennui.</p><p>She couldn’t even describe it as neither or both, paradoxical as those descriptions are.</p><p>Rather, it’s madness, word and thought spilling from her tongue as easily as saliva.</p><p>It’s madness, dark and bubbling and familiar in a way that she both remembers and doesn’t.</p><p>She should remember.</p><hr/><p>She doesn’t listen to Hubert when he advises her to rent a hotel room for the week, just long enough for him to arrive. Though, that, the time of arrival, is a lie of course.</p><p>They both understand that even as they bid each other farewell over the phone.</p><p>She knows him just as he knows her.</p><p>He knows her inclinations, stubbornness mixed with self-destruction, and she knows his, concern mixed with agitation and love, mania burning brightly as a lighthouse’s beacon.</p><p>He would be here tomorrow night—overnight flight booked and with Bernadetta in tow.</p><p>It isn’t that she never listens to him—his advice is often sound if she were to be honest—but rather, she couldn’t. She doesn’t want to.</p><p>She doesn’t want to run as foolish as that train of thought is. It doesn’t feel right to run.</p><p>She shouldn’t run.</p><p>It feels wrong to do so, a defiance—a defilement and a mockery—of both who she is and who she isn’t.</p><p>She isn’t sure of who that is—who that her is—but she must.</p><p>It would be wrong to do otherwise.</p><p>She knows that.</p><p>He knows that.</p><hr/><p>She feels like she should remember him.</p><p>The tidy blond hair, strands combed in a way that make her want to rage, the blue of his eyes, furious even in the stillness of her room, color only accentuated by the dim light of her bedside lamp, shadows cast and long, and the clothes, pristine yet unmistakably antiquated, a relic of some bygone era.</p><p>Really, as she looks at him now, details clearer underneath her scrutinizing gaze and lacking in the blemishes of the painting and the cracked monitor, she couldn’t even describe him as a man—boy or teen perhaps, but not man.</p><p>He’s too young. Sixteen or seventeen perhaps, but not a full-grown man as she understands it, as she remembers it.</p><p>He’s little over half of her age younger.</p><p>That isn’t right.</p><p>“Why are you here?”</p><p>She doesn’t need to know his name. Why would she? Ghosts, demons, whatever he deigns himself as, are things of myth, frivolities discarded and buried with the past.</p><p>He, whoever he is, doesn’t reply even as her frown deepens, words repeating once more, voice forceful and foreign even to her own ears.</p><p>She’s gotten angry before, but she doesn’t ever remember this—rage barely restrained and emotion meshing with some odd sorrow, entirely unfit for the current occasion.</p><p>Should she not be afraid? Nervous perhaps? Sobbing even?</p><p>She doesn’t think most women—most people even—would act as she does now, feel as she does now.</p><p>Not when faced with some phantasm, some unnatural thing woken up and drawn from the crevices of the abyss.</p><p>“I said,” she repeats, “why are you here?”</p><p>No reply even as she reaches for the letter opener on her bedside stand. It doesn’t feel right to be empty-handed.</p><p>Though, the letter opener doesn’t feel quite right either—too light and weighted too differently. Differently from what? She doesn’t quite know. At the very least, it’s something, better than air and emptyhandedness.</p><p>When her fingers finally wrap around the handle of the letter opener, lips parting in another question, that is when he moves, lunging forward, wild mannered yet voice soundless, face only twisted into a snarl as his own fingers wrap around her neck, tight and choking, movement spanning less than a few seconds, and as she feels a pressure on her mouth, more teeth and tongue than anything resembling softness.</p><p>It hurts. She wants to scream—his teeth are clamped around her tongue, biting down with enough force to sever, more akin to a ravenous beast than a man—but she doesn’t. She couldn’t. She doesn’t want to.</p><p>To do so would be to surrender, to defile the her, the memory of she and he, that she doesn’t know.</p><p>Even as his grip tightens around her neck, enough to bruise or even snap the bone—neck wrung like a winter rabbit’s—she doesn’t scream.</p><p>She only draws the knife up behind his neck and brings it downward, hands clenching tightly around the wooden handle and grip hard enough for her knuckles to pop, blue veins protruding.</p><p>The weight isn’t right even as the knife plunges into his neck, his flesh, and as a wetness trickles onto the front of her nightgown. Right compared to what? She doesn’t know, but it isn’t right. It doesn’t sooth her agitation, madness bubbling in a way that’s both familiar and unfamiliar.</p><p>It, everything, shouldn’t make her want more, yearn for something more—something different, something monstrous, something far from civilized, modern humankind.</p><p>Despite the force of her blow, the kiss doesn’t cease, teeth biting downward and ruining flesh and fingers tightening, marring skin with dark bruising as her sight flickers, flashes of white tinging an increasingly darkening vision and memory overlaying with the present.</p><p>She doesn’t want to be devoured—swallowed up and taken away by time and memory—and he doesn’t either.</p><p>But she doesn’t want to forget either.</p><p>Thus, she doesn’t stop, hands twisting the knife further into his neck: pass white flesh, pass tendon, and pass bone.</p><p>It should be easier—she remembers it being easier, one swift motion and not seconds accumulating into eternity—but it isn’t.</p><p>Warm blood dripping, hers and his, onto the bedsheets and her gown, vermillion staining white.</p><p>It should be the end of them both—she can feel the blood pool in her mouth alongside the wet tongue, hers, brushing against the stump of its former residence—but it isn’t.</p><p>When she finally feels the dulled tip of the letter opener—it should be a dagger she thinks—against her own throat, he’s gone, blood and warmth dissipating alongside the pressure on her neck and mouth.</p><p>No blood, neither on her gown nor on her bed, and no severed tongue, organ still firmly attached to the inside her mouth rather than in someone else’s.</p><p>Even when she, letter opener still clenched in hand, moves to the bathroom, lights flickering on after a few clicks of the wall switch, there’s nothing on her throat or in the mirror, nothing outside of her own appearance, brown hair somewhat frazzled and blue, almost violet, eyes still bearing those dark circles but otherwise unremarkable.</p><p>No blood, no bruising, and no stains.</p><p>Everything is as it should be—she well and he gone, as if never existing—yet it isn’t.</p><p>There should be something more, yet there isn’t.</p><p>No weight in her hands and no weight upon her head, hair drawn up rather than the looseness of now.</p><p>Even when she finds herself in bed minutes later, heart thudding violently against her chest, it isn’t as it should be.</p><p>It isn’t love, and it isn’t hate.</p><p>Those aren’t accurate to her feelings, aren’t strong enough to describe her feelings—bubbling as they are, thrumming and coursing through her veins, blood drawn into the heart and then pumped out by way of the arteries.</p><p>It isn’t that she couldn’t describe it—she could—but she doesn’t want to.</p><p>She doesn’t want to acknowledge the her of then, fragmented and lacking in the clarity of memory.</p><p>To do so would acknowledge the wrongness, the strangeness, of everything now. It isn’t right even if she doesn’t understand why.</p><p>She doesn’t want to speak even as she feels the word, the description for everything, drip upon her tongue, easy coming as saliva.</p><p>Madness.</p>
  </div><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_foot_notes"><b>Author's Note:</b><blockquote class="userstuff"><p>I have not touched the Three Houses fandom or game in months since I got burned out on the discourse and in-fighting, so apologies on this...but this is a lil' thing I wanted to do...just for fun...am a longtime fan of the series with almost all the games played...but it's so mindboggling how inane the discourse gets...maybe I'll return to FE3H fandom with fics in the future, but I'm too tired of the discourse for now...I do miss Ashe/M!Byleth though tbh...only have 1 fic for that...and I also miss Dimilix and Edelbert...</p><p>The title comes from Psalms 23 and the revised ending of Dickens's Great Expectations. Lovely book if you have the time to read. "I saw no shadow of parting from her." Rather ominous and ambiguous ending for that work really....</p><p>Honestly, I want to turn this into a longfic, but like...no time...I can say that the central idea of this fic can be related to this quote from Wuthering Heights...love Wuthering Heights so much...fantastic work if you have time to read. Incredibly lovely...</p><p>“Catherine Earnshaw, may you not rest as long as I am living. You said I killed you--haunt me then. The murdered do haunt their murderers. I believe--I know that ghosts have wandered the earth. Be with me always--take any form--drive me mad. Only do not leave me in this abyss, where I cannot find you! Oh, God! It is unutterable! I cannot live without my life! I cannot live without my soul!”</p><p>Themes: History, Ghosts, Memory, Dagger, Speak, and Tongue</p><p>I think Dimitri and Edelgard are two sides of the exact coin. Perhaps if it were a different life, it would have ended differently...it's sorta the same appeal as Edelbert to me honestly but less "sweet." It's the concept of madness—running with no tangible purpose until your heart gives out underneath the rage and hatred to Edelbert's mad devotion. Also bits of Edelbert subtext I guess if you want to interpret it that way, and I think in a modern setting, they'd be those really close friends who do almost everything together. Those "why aren't they married?" sort of people. Still kinda co-dependent too.</p><p>Also where's Byleth? I like to think this is either set in a Crimson Flower with an Ashe/M!Byleth or Jeritza/M!Byleth ending depending on how "non-canonical" you want to get. Not super pertinent, and it's up to interpretation, but those are mine.</p></blockquote></div></div>
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